"In just 12 months phishing has firmly established itself as a threat to any organisation or individual conducting business online," he said.

Mr Sunner said MessageLabs was starting to see some phishing attacks become very focused on one company or organisation.

"Already particular businesses are threatened and blackmailed, indicating a shift from the random, scattergun approach, to customised attacks designed to take advantage of the perceived weaknesses of some businesses," he said.

Although phishing attacks grew substantially throughout 2004, viruses and spam remain popular with cyber-criminals and vandals.

One of the biggest outbreaks took place in January when the MyDoom virus started circulating. To date the company has caught more than 60 million copies of the virus.

Also up this year was the amount of spam in circulation. In 2003 only 40% of messages were spam. But by the end of 2004, almost three-quarters of messages were junk.